The Hanging Picnic was conceived
and produced by Factual Nonsense and centred around an examination
of the means and metaphors of the art of picnicking intertwined with
an open air art exhibition. Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard exhibited
Down on the Farm (version 2), a revised version of a work
concerning an incident that Iain had been involved in at the 1992
Reading Festival, from their Goldsmiths degree show which had closed
the day before The Hanging Picnic.

In addition to the curating and subsequent
hanging on the railings of Hoxton Square 'objects' by over 25 artists,
The Hanging Picnic also presented an essentially private
act made 'grossly' public - the picnic. The event, including the process
of its curation and organisation was featured as part of a documentary
on Joshua Compston and his role as FN's director, directed by Liz
Friend and commissioned and screened by LWT.

Details of Down on the Farm (version 2)

Iain and Jane's work Down on the Farm
exposes an unlikely incident from Iain's past. At the Reading Festival
in 1992 Iain threw cottage cheese at the band The Farm while they
were on-stage.

Two days before the event,
Joshua wrote to each of the participating artists. In his letter
he said of the project:

"The whole of Hoxton Square is not
the exhibition playfield nor is the exhibition meant to be what
might be termed 'site interventionist'. Thus as a result, unless
a strong case can be argued for such an approach, the work must
situate itself within a mirroring of the hanging on the Bayswater
Road. This is as much to set up a feeling of "walls of art"
that must be penetrated in order to visit the picnic as it is a
desire to follow closely the real practice upon which it is based."

Joshua Compston (1 Jun 1970
- 5 Mar 1996).
Joshua set up Factual Nonsense, his gallery and project space, in
Shoreditch, London in October 1992, shortly after graduating in
art history from the Courtauld Institute in London. Aiming to establish
a cultural revolution of some kind, he intended his space to be
'a forum for all elements disenchanted with the laxity and ennui
of current thinking'. Between 1993 and his tragically premature
death in 1996 at the age of twenty-five, he organised exhibitions
and performative day events in Hoxton Square, as well as commissioning
the pages of Other Men's Flowers from his artist friends.